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SBS 2003 Server Suddenly Freezes

I have an SBS 2003 server running on a HP Proliant ML 350 G5 box. Suddenly our server has started freezing up to the point of having to restart the system. I have reviewed the logs, had consultants look at it and still nothing jumps out. Has anyone had this issue recently? Any idea's on where else we can check than antivirus, paging file and event logs?

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How old is the server?
Has there been any new hardware or software installed recently?
Check for USB flash drives or external storage attached by USB.
Any other new periphral or device introduced to the system recently.

I once worked on a HP ProLiant Server that was about 6 or 7 years old.
The staff informed me that once or twice a week the server would shut down by itself.
It gradually became more frequent.

This was during the summer months and the room was poorly ventilated.
I noticed the system fans were working hard all the time.
I was fortunate as the logs indicated a thermal issue.
It was overheating so it shut down to protect system and data.
Once the opertional temprature returned to a stable level it would boot up.

Checking the internals there was little to no dust or matter clogging the fans and vents, so I removed the cooling block and found absolutly no thermal compound what so ever between the block and the CPU.
It just had an adhesive foil sheet stuck to the base of the block.

I assume this was a form of thermal material.
But it was just not doing the job of transfering the heat from the CPU to the block.
I removed the old material and applied thermal paste and all was well.
The system fans also returned to their normal speed and became quiet again.

I have found on most PC's with a cooling issue they usually shut down but sometimes it can cause a system lock up, as I call it.

I am not suggesting this is your issue but if you have not looked into it yet perhaps it's something you might consider.

Sean has some great ideas about temperature and dust. They are worth considering and easy to test. The dust, in particular, is culprit in many older servers.

You didn't say (and, sorry, I wasn't specific in asking) what percentage space is free in the above numbers. In looking at them, though, one of the things I would look at is contiguous disk space. If the percentage is too low to defrag, or you haven't been doing that, the logging and spooling of jobs may be causing crashes as the OS (in looking at the Windows partition) may not be finding space to recover from jobs.

- Given most system are full of applications it can be hard to determine the source of issues when they start to hang.

One style of trouble shooting that admins use is called the process of elimination or divide by two.

Lets start with the system in it's current state. If hangs
- running msconfig we can disable applications and services.
- if you disable all non MS services and applications and the hangs still happens the issue is not likely an APP issue
- If we boot into safe mode and the issue still occurs the issue is either a low level OS service or hardware.

While this type of troubleshooting is not this quick it can help isolate the issue.

If you are still unable to find the troubled item Microsoft might be able to help. The performance group at MS can setup perfmon logs (the logging is best if saved on anther system) and or memory dumps of various kings.

Did you checked the hardware; is everything normal?
You can look at the BIOS and check if every compnonent is behaving normally.
What is the amount of RAM, if all you banks are populated just populate half of them and see.

If it is software related, then only way is to see logs. Run in safe mode and observe for some time.

Regards,
Aamir

> Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2010 21:52:05 -0400
> From: email@removed
> To: email@removed
> Subject: RE:[ms-server2003-l] SBS 2003 Server Suddenly Freezes
>
>
>
> The previous suggestions are good, here are a few more.
>
> - Given most system are full of applications it can be hard to determine the source of issues when they start to hang.
>
> One style of trouble shooting that admins use is called the process of elimination or divide by two.
>
> Lets start with the system in it's current state. If hangs
> - running msconfig we can disable applications and services.
> - if you disable all non MS services and applications and the hangs still happens the issue is not likely an APP issue
> - If we boot into safe mode and the issue still occurs the issue is either a low level OS service or hardware.
>
> While this type of troubleshooting is not this quick it can help isolate the issue.
>
> If you are still unable to find the troubled item Microsoft might be able to help. The performance group at MS can setup perfmon logs (the logging is best if saved on anther system) and or memory dumps of various kings.
>
>
>